"Look here, Pod!" he called, excitedly, "see the strike I've made! The river bottom is yellow with gold!"
Then I heard Pod say, "Rich, I should say! Funny this placer hasn't been discovered before now."
"Let's file a claim," said Coonskin, "we can make a million in six months."
"Let's!" the Professor exclaimed. As soon as breakfast was over both tenderfeet were trying their luck at panning gold. A cabin stood not far away, and presently there issued from it an old man who approached the argonauts, and sat on a log to watch them.
"Your first experience at placer mining?" the stranger observed.
"For an instant both men looked confused. I could see that Coonskin didn't want to reveal his newly discovered fortune by the way he dumped his sand and said nothing. But Pod held on to a frying-pan full of sand with one hand, and reached for his revolver with the other to defend his claim.
"Well, boys," observed the native, laughing, "you're goin' through jest what all tenderfeet do when they first strike these parts—try to wash gold dust out of mica. All the streams out here 're filled with them glist'ning particles, but recollect, boys, all what glitters ain't gold. That you've got's called 'fool's gold.'"
It was plain that Pod was disappointed, but the stranger gave him some good advice, and a large Colorado diamond for a keepsake, then strolled away, leaving two sadder but wiser men.
The road to Colorado Springs was a popular thoroughfare for bicyclists. Saturday afternoon, as we donks began the ascent of a long, steep, and winding incline, a din of voices and a whir of wheels suddenly sounded ahead, and a party of fifty or more young men and women in gala attire came speeding down toward us. As quickly as possible we donks turned out to the right. I think the bicyclists must have been English, for they steered to the left. In a minute "it was all off."
It happened that the leader of the wheel brigade saw us donks too late and tried to save himself by turning suddenly to his right. Result: Tire off and man off. Sequel: A wild rough-and-tumble conglomeration of sexes, as his followers mixed up with our party. Bicycles, donkeys, men, women, lunch baskets, packs, hats, petticoats and cameras were distributed in all directions. The cries and shrieks of the bruised and frightened together with the confusion of the wreckage so terrified us donks that as soon as we could pick ourselves up we reared on our haunches, and cavorted, and brayed, and so help me Balaam! it was the worst mix-up I was ever in.